JOHN PULE IN NIUE (2013): The homecoming

John Pule pushes aside another tangle
of thick branches, steps through the ankle-grabbing undergrowth,
scans the ground which is strewn with coconuts then peers closely
into the green canopy above.

We're in thick and humid bush but he
pushes on across the slippery limestone, further and further away
from the narrow track which has lead him here. After more fruitless
searching he laughs, “Anyway, it was around here I was born”.

The old house – behind the village of
Liku on Niue's eastern coastline – is long gone. The foundations
are here somewhere but no one lived in the house after his parents
moved to New Zealand, as generations of Niueans have done, in 1964.

Pule, born in 1962, is back in Niue for
the first time since 99. As the island nation's most famous artist
and writer – who calls himself as “a poet” to the amusement of
his longtime dealer John Gow of Auckland's Gow-Langsford Gallery,
also accompanying him – he has today come to look for his
birthplace which stood beside his grandparents' house, also gone.

Earlier he'd told how his father and
his cousins made a pathway of lavalavas and cloth to the house and
his dad and his new bride walked across them.

“And she planted a red hibiscus out
the front,” one of the landmarks he's been looking for.

Pule has returned in Niue and eight of
his large canvases are being exhibited in the modest but perfectly
suitable Makini Hall in the capital Alofi. Pule's work and presence
has been an ambitious idea mooted by the convener of the island's
third biannual Arts and Cultural Festival, Dr Colin Tukuitonga.

The
exhibition (“$400,000 worth of paintings on the walls” says Gow,
and that doesn't include insurance or the cost of transport) is the
centre-piece of the week-long festival.

Among the most relieved the pictures
are finally up – aside from Gow, extremely relaxed given what might
have gone wrong – is Pule's friend Fred Renata who has taken care
of the technical requirements then installed the works.

Opening night – attended by the
premier the Hon. Toke Talagi and other dignitaries as well as
extended family and friends – coincidentally happens to be Pule's
51st birthday for which there is cake and a celebratory
atmosphere.

In his introductory speech Gow tells
how he first met Pule in the early 80s through the artist Mark Cross
(also in attendance and who divides his time between Liku, his wife's
village, and New Zealand) and then in the early 90s went to a Pule
exhibition.

He says as someone who sees a lot of paintings it is rare
to be stopped in his tracks, but Pule's work did that to him.

“It was a unique vision, a confident
hand and they were beautifully painted. So although I had no money at
the time I felt I had to buy one which I did, and it still hangs in
pride of place in my house in Auckland.”

Gow speaks of their long friendship, “a
career which has taken John all over the world, and John has taken
Niue all over the world” and also refers to something art
researcher Michael Graham-Stewart from London, also on the trip,
observed about the hall: “He said, 'It's almost like the work knows
it has come home'.”

Although he has never previously spoken
at any opening, a visibly nervous Pule steps up – and speaking
initially in Niuean – greets his guests, pays tribute to his
origins and Liku, then tells of how the family left and settle in
Otara, that he was expelled from school at 14, was lucky when his
father's sister Auntie Mocca took him in, and how through her and his
mother he was able to start putting together a personal and cultural
history.

He explains how he came across of book
of hiapo (Niuean bark cloth paintings) which documented the uneasy
relationship between the first explorers and people of Niue and how
this art form – largely lost or unknown to Niuean people today –
immediately informed his art as a mode for expression. He says the
pattern of imagery on hiapo was like looking at a bookshelf of ideas,
and it opened him up as an artist.

He says he'll be in the hall every day
until noon if anyone wants to discuss the paintings (later he notes
artists usually mount a work then become invisible, but here it was
important he be seen and available) and concludes by saying
“everything I have written over the years, and what I have painted,
is very much influenced by the place where I was born”.

It is a moving and modest speech, an he
is immediately surrounded by well-wishers.

Vanessa Marsh, Niue's Tourism
Development Coordinator and the quietly efficient contact on the
ground, admits there were many challenges getting this extraordinary
exhibition installed – not the least finding a suitable space on
the small island -- but it was important the exhibition happen,
especially for artists on the island, some of whose impressive work
is also part of the festival.

“It shows local people how important
it is to have faith and confidence in your own ability.”

Pule agrees, his career shows “it's a
possible thing”: “It's a beautiful life but it's very hard, a
difficult road. All artists know it's great to do these things but
it's another thing to live off your art and have some form of
security.

“That comes about from, 'Do people,
do my people, want me? Are they interested in what I'm talking about?
Am I using the right language to describe a situation, a community
situation, on a national or international level?'

“If people are interested in your
stories they are prepared to buy it because it's an extension of a
history they can also expand on and talk about.”

The day after the opening Pule, as
reluctant an interviewee as he is a public speaker, says he's been
pleased by response from his people.

“They have basically never seen
anything like it up here. They had a glimpse of my CV and they could
see I have been exhibiting all around the world and in Polynesia, but
have never bought a solo exhibition back to Niue. So there was a gap
in my CV, but I managed to put it in there when they printed the
brochure. It needed to be recorded.

“This is very important to me,
absolutely. It's long overdue. It's good to be appreciated and
acknowledged, especially by your own people.”

The exhibition – the first solo
exhibition on Niue by an internationally acclaimed artist -- has been
for Pule a homecoming on many levels.

In the catalogue for this singular
exhibition Pule's friend and artistic biographer Nicholas Thomas,
director of the Cambridge University Museum of Archeology and
Anthropology, writes, “He has painted the oceans and heavens but
returned often to the gardens of Liku and the landscape of Niue”.

The morning after his fruitless search
for the red hibiscus and the foundations of the family home, the poet
John Pule returns to Liku by himself for another look.

A few hours later he's back in Alofi
with a very big smile: “I found it, I found what I was looking
for”.

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